Minneapolis Mayor R.T. Rybak: Harry Reid ‘dancing around’ gun issue

Minneapolis Mayor R.T. Rybak accused Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of “dancing around the issue” of gun control on Monday, hours before President Barack Obama will attend a gun control event in Rybak’s city.

“How can Harry Reid, a fellow Democrat and I’m willing to criticize him, say he hasn’t read the bill?” Rybak said on MSNBC. “Dianne Feinstein has been a mayor, she was there at a shooting, she put her finger in a bullet hole. She knows why we need this action. This is an emergency. Let’s knock off the Washington baloney and support the president and get things done.”

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“I want to say to him that I respect him on a whole lot of levels but he’s dancing around this issue and people are dying in this country,” Rybak continued. “That is not news to anybody. What the president has done is with all the stuff on his plate, stuck his neck out and said look, ‘We need to solve this.’ I saw what the president’s face looked like when he came out of meeting those victims. I’ve been there. So have many mayors around this country, and we recognize the fact that this isn’t about some sort of game about who wins or loses in Washington.”

Rybak, the vice-chairman of the Democratic national committee, was referencing Reid’s comments last month casting doubt on the chances of gun control measures passing in the Senate. In an interview with a Nevada television station, Reid said an assault weapons ban was unlikely to pass both houses in Congress.

“In the Senate, we’re going to do what we think can get through the House and I’m not going to go through a bunch of these gyrations just to say we’ve done something,” Reid said. “If we’re really legislators, the purpose of it is to pass legislation.”

While in Minneaplis, Obama will visit the Minneapolis Police Department’s Special Operations Center and will meet with local leaders about Minneapolis’ successes in reducing gun violence. Rybak is a member of Mayors Against Illegal Guns and has proposed a plan to grade gun and ammunition companies and stop buying police supplies from companies with failing grades.

Feinstein, the California Democrat who is sponsoring the assault weapon ban, was previously mayor of San Francisco. While serving as President of the City’s Board of Supervisors, she discovered the body of fellow supervisor Harvey Milk.